The term “smart metering” is generally understood to mean the concept of equipping customers with electronic energy consumption recording equipment in order thus to provide additional functionalities both to the customer and to the utility company, for example via a network, besides a simple recording of the amount of energy that has been consumed.
With this, it is possible that the customer can be informed in real time about his current energy consumption. The term “energy consumption” is understood here to mean the consumption by the customer in relation to any type of energy which is supplied to households and companies. This includes, besides the energy forms of electricity, water and gas, also any other forms of energy, such as district heating for example.
In order to record the energy consumption, intelligent metering systems, also called intelligent meters or “smart meters”, are used at the premises of the consumer in question. Smart meters meter the energy that is consumed. The consumer may in this case be a natural or legal person that consumes various measurable forms of energy, such as electricity, gas, water or heat. The aim of using smart meters is to implement intelligent metering systems which would make it possible for example to levy variable charges depending on the overall demand and network load. As a result, energy supply networks can be better utilized on the whole.
From the BSI [German Federal Office for Information Security] technical guideline TR-03109, it is known to provide a so-called smart meter gateway, also known as a concentrator, as a central communication unit which can communicate with one or more smart meters. To this end, the gateway is able to communicate with equipment in the so-called “Home Area Network” and with equipment in the “Wide Area Network”. The Home Area Network includes all smart meters which are coupled to the gateway, as well as, for example, private computing units of the consumers. The private computing units may be used for example to provide information about current energy consumption values recorded by the smart meters. The Wide Area Network is designed to enable communication between the gateway and authorized market operators. By way of example, the gateway can collect the data from all the smart meters and can provide said data to a superordinate collecting point, for example a utility company or a metering point operator.